Stephen Dysley: SNP tax freezing has left an exciting legacy … And these are hard -working families who will have to pay the price

Apply opinions for taxpayers in borders. Their local authorities, the Scottish Border Council, announced an increase in rates by 10 percent.

For middle -class family in group E property, it will mean to pay £ 178 more in tax councils.

Despite the fact that the Scottish Government government has been presented with an additional £ 19 million, Borders says that more income is needed to finance free school nutrition and increase the remuneration to employees of the Council in accordance with the real subsistence minimum.

The council tax is expected to bring an additional £ 7 million to pay for these priorities.

No one deny that local government employees have to pay, but people whose pockets will be chosen for its account are no less working, and are usually not used by favorable employment conditions provided to government and public sector employees.

Against the background of the cost of crisis, prices and taxes compete to see what can be shot faster, and in the first winter, in which many elderly people were forced to do without the help of paying their fuel bills, this is another blow in the intestine Secondary classes are at risk, create jobs, save for their future, and will seem to be punished for it on every avenue.

And do not forget: borders are an administration under the leadership of Tori and an independent under the direction, although the members of the opposition participated in the preparation of tax plans.

If the Conservative Council can escape with 10 percent, expect that local authorities will be even more confiscation.

The Council is fighting budget proposals throughout Scotland, and although the Scotland government has thrown several additional QUIDs in its kittens, local authorities still have a lack of funding.

Taxpayers can expect a combination of tax seizures and reducing the services we saw once and again when we brought counters for beans.

Much of the guilt belongs to the SNP door. During the first decade of his time, the Government of the Cheap Headlines and expensive results bought votes with freezing a council tax.

Protection of families from comprehensive taxes is not a bad thing, but nationalists have not made it recklessly funded, forcing local authorities to transfer services to bone if they want their piece of cake of the central government.

Ordinary ponds, including vulnerable people, paid the price for this cynical political maneuver.

At the time when the Scotland government was ready to recognize the devastating side effects of its freezing policy, the damage was already done. Citizens are still paying for cost today, as residents of borders soon know.

Of course, SNP will never be responsible for this Debal. There is difficulty, and no one will. Nationalists may have been in power, but they are not the only authors of the crisis.

For decades, even before devolution, there has been a conspiracy to avoid a political spectrum.

None of the main parties were preparing for the degree of problem or scale of the necessary changes. So much about our policy and our public services can be traced to thinking that the necessary reforms are too heavy and can be postponed to later. Later here.

Last week, the Institute for Fiscal Research (IFS) conducted a very good analysis of the Scottish budget, especially for financing local self -government.

He described the council tax as “outdated, regressive and distorted”, which is a polite economist for dinner of the absolute dog.

The main among the failures revealed was the lack of revaluation over more than three decades. Properties are still taxed on the basis of the value calculated in April 1991, and at this point the Soviet Union was still existed, the first web site has not yet been published, and the secretary of Economics Kate Forbs has just returned it.

As IFS points out, it is not just ineffective but unfair: the owners of the homes whose properties have increased in value continue to pay in the same way as those whose homes were evaluated more modestly. This is just one way in which the current system of the council tax is regressive.

Scotland has long been overdue, and since SNP has been pleased to destroy local government finances for narrow political benefits, it must get to SNP in order to spend some of its political capital that reformed the broken and unjust system.

Time for training has long passed. We need a complete, thorough, trouble -free national conversation about what services local authorities provide, how much they cost, how best to finance them and where to fall fiscal load.

It will not be popular because changes are never, and all open ones will be winners and winners, but reform delay is no longer an option. Continue the path we spend and this will either lead to a courageous increase in taxes or cruel services.

The debate we need is not the usual work with the Holyrood bubble, where politicians, third sector lobbyists and trade unions agree that higher taxes, more expenses and more government are required.

We need to resist all the difficult choice, not only those who prefer to have our cozy left institution.

Yes, we will have to consider whether we want to make local taxation more progressive. IFS has put a plan on this, which, he said, would see that the tenth of us pays less by local tax, one tenth pays more, and the rest continues to pay more or less the same.

But we will also have to consider the proper role and size of local self -government, and whether there may be any thing that can do it more economically effectively in the private sector.

There should be no sacred cows, whether local authorities have generally proceeded from a distinctive gathering or housing business or to study the case for the introduction of market mechanisms of education, whether it is school vouchers or individual wages for teachers.

I doubt the debate will lead to all this radical.

If there is a philosophy that unites the political, political and state elite of Scotland, it is left -wing conservatism. But the debate would at least have forced the central and local authorities to resist the crisis and be honest with the public. They thank us at least.

The absence of leadership on this issue is flashy and detrimental. It leaves taxpayers like borders and others in other places, trying to force stretched household budgets.

The invaluable chiefs of the Council and Ministers of the Government, the amounts involved may not seem so much.

But for households already placed, it is a couple of children’s coaches, who cannot be purchased, a few canceled, subscriptions, another small treat that will need to be done without.

This may seem small when injustice, but so many families have already paid their fair share. Instead of a little rest, to spend some of their earnings on the house or children, they are stun with the request they paid even more. It’s not just wrong, it’s cruel.

Local self -government finances urgently need reform, but efficiency is not a reason. It is also more fundamental: justice.